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Subject:SUMMARY for GUI terminology question From:"Mark L. Levinson" <mark -at- MEMCO -dot- CO -dot- IL> Date:Sun, 30 May 1999 18:01:59 +0200
On 9 May I posted a GUI terminology question regarding what to call
a page that is just like a tabbed page except brought to the front
by an icon rather than by a tab.
Thanks to all who responded. A plurality tended toward
minimalism, such as giving the thing a name referring to its
content rather than to its structure (for example, "the Search page"
if it does a search) or attempting to shun a structural description
in favor of a procedural description that might not need to mention
the thing by name at all.
Those who did venture names other than simply "page" (which was
implicit in my question) offered the following:
window
data window
thumbnail
view
I admit that "window" is what two writers here in my department
came up with spontaneously and independently. I don't like it
because the thing does not conform to the usual definition of a
window (can't be indepdenently resized, minimized, etc.); it's
inside another thing that does.
I'm uncomfortable with "thumbnail" too, for the page. I think that
the writer intended it to refer to the icons that bring the pages
to the front; but they're not thumbnails in the sense of being
miniatures of anything.
The term "view" is interesting, implying that each of the pages
looks at a different aspect of the same subject. Often, that
is indeed the case.
Between "view" and "page," I'd incline to "page" because (a) while
often each of the series does look at a different aspect of the
same subject, "often" isn't "always" and (b) the term "page" sticks
close to the established "tabbed page" term, and thus is less likely
to strike the reader as quirky.
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Mark L. Levinson - Memco Ltd. - Wallenberg 24 - 69719 Tel Aviv - Israel
tel. 03-6450049 (home 09-9552411 or 09-9555720, shoe phone 051-377181)
fax 03-6450001, e-mail mark -at- memco -dot- co -dot- il (home nosnivel -at- netvision -dot- net -dot- il)
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